U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government, Department of Justice.

NCJRS Virtual Library

The Virtual Library houses over 235,000 criminal justice resources, including all known OJP works.
Click here to search the NCJRS Virtual Library

Street Youth and Labor Market Strain

NCJ Number
197967
Journal
Journal of Criminal Justice Volume: 30 Issue: 6 Dated: November/December 2002 Pages: 519-533
Author(s)
Stephen W. Baron; Timothy F. Hartnagel
Editor(s)
Kent B. Joscelyn
Date Published
November 2002
Length
15 pages
Annotation
This study examined the role labor market strain plays in the criminal behavior and substance use of street youths.
Abstract
The classic strain theories argue that delinquency results from the failure to obtain goals through legitimate activity. However, there are some questions about the conditional effects of such variables as delinquent peers, self-efficacy, and social support, and the intervening variable of negative emotions. In applying aspects of strain theory to a higher-risk sample of older homeless street youth, this article focuses upon occupational strain as represented by labor market problems experienced by street youth. It examines intervening mechanisms of attributions and negative emotions and suggests conditioning factors affecting the choice of adaptation. Data were collected over a 6-month period in 1993 in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. During this time period, the labor market was extremely difficult with the unemployment rate reaching 20.2 percent. Two hundred and twenty youths met the study criteria with 20 declining to participate. Information on a number of measures of criminal involvement and drug use was obtained through self-reports. The findings indicate that youths who experienced a greater discrepancy between their actual employment experiences and their perceptions of labor market fairness were at greater risk for committing more property crime, violent crime, and total crime. This experience of strain may have led these youths to commit more crimes in an attempt to reduce or manage this discrepancy. However, labor market strain did not have a significant impact on street youths’ drug use. This suggests that its generalizability is limited to the realm of property and violent offenses. The findings both support and raise questions about strain theory. The findings indicate that labor market strain is an important independent influence on deviant behavior and offers suggestive evidence for some of the conditioning interactions outlined in the various forms of the theory. The importance of these findings is that they are derived from a sample of higher crime-risk youth to whom strain theory has not been applied. Future research should explore the role of strain and its conditioning variables on crime and delinquency using a broader range of samples drawn from both street and conventional populations. References